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Sebastian Vettel's title defense got off to a slow start in Australia on Friday with the Red Bull racer admitting he "wasn't happy" with his RB8
The German struggled during first practice, finishing outside the top ten, while the afternoon did not see much improvement as heavy rain prior to the start left the track very wet.
And although Vettel was one of the busiest runners in Practice Two with 19 laps, he ended the first day of the season down in 10th place, three seconds off the pace.
"This morning it wasn't very good, I wasn't happy at all in the car," said the 24-year-old.
"This afternoon I think it was a bit better. Obviously with the conditions it was difficult to get a lot of running. It was more or less the same for all of us, but with the little time we had in the afternoon it was quite okay.
"It's up to us to find the balance and understand the car a little bit more and learn a little bit more about the car in these conditions on this circuit, and hopefully go a lot quicker tomorrow.
"Tomorrow the target is to make it into Q3, and then we go from there."
The German admitted he is concerned that his "messy" Friday will have an impact on the rest of his weekend as a limited number of tyres on Saturday means he cannot just run at will.
"You can't re-invent the wheel, even though you had a messy Friday due to conditions it doesn't mean that on Saturday you just run the whole hour, you don't have enough tyres for that, and obviously it's about preparing for qualifying mostly.
"You can't do everything in one hour, so as I said the most important thing now is to make a step overnight, learn a bit more about the car - the laps in the end were important to understand a bit more - and then we go from there."
Source: Planet-F1
Fernando Alonso could only manage sixth best time during qualifying, for the Korean Grand Prix at the Yeongam circuit, and was clearly unhappy with the outcome, which will see him start the race from an all Ferrari third row on the grid but remains optimistic that he can still battle for a win as he did at Suzuka last weekend.
Speaking to media after qualifying, Alonso said, “I can’t be happy with sixth, but the position reflects our current situation: McLaren and Red Bull are stronger than us so it just leaves us to fight between ourselves for fifth and sixth places. That’s how Saturday goes, but maybe tomorrow will end up like Sunday in Suzuka and we will find ourselves again fighting for the win.”
The Spaniard, who won last year’s inaugural Korean GP, explained, “When tyre degradation is very high, usually we are in good shape, but here the situation is not very clear, as the behaviour of the Supersofts over a long run and on full tanks is still an unknown quantity. We had considered using this tyre right from Q1 but then we decided not to take too many risks.”
“Today, we were losing too much time in the first sector, where we lacked top speed. On my last run, I immediately lost a few tenths at the first corner and after that, I could not make up the time, so I decided not to complete the lap,” revealed the two times world champion.
Alonso added, “Unfortunately, I start from the dirty side of the grid, which should be a major disadvantage here, so I hope I don’t lose a place to Rosberg. We will have to keep an eye on what happens ahead of us and exploit the strategy in our favour.”
Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali shared Alonso’s optimism, saying: “Only eight days ago we were in an almost identical situation and then, 24 hours later we came very close to winning. Therefore, let’s wait and see how things go tomorrow and then we can add up the figures from this weekend.”
When asked about the new front wing the team tested on the Italia 150, Alonso was vague, “The new front wing? I don’t like talking about individual components; on the one hand I think that’s a job for the engineers, on the other, I prefer to share my opinions about it only with the team.”Source: YallaF1
Felipe Massa was far from happy with qualifying sixth on the grid for the Korean Grand Prix.
Starting from the dirtier side of the grid for Sunday's race, it means the Brazilian will be hard pushed to make ground on the leaders and help team-mate Fernando Alonso out in his quest for the drivers' title.
"I am not happy, especially because sixth place means I have to start on the less clean side of the grid, which is a major handicap on a surface as dirty as this one," said Massa. "I was very pleased at the end of Q2, because the car was more competitive than yesterday and I thought I could fight for a top place.
"Unfortunately, I had a bit of traffic on the only run I did in Q3 on my last set of new soft tyres: a shame because the car was going well, but I was not able to get the most out of it.
"The situation in terms of grip has improved, even with the harder tyres and I expect that trend to continue tomorrow. I am expecting to have a very tough race. It it was to rain it could be even more slippery than usual, given the condition of the track surface."
Source: ESPNF1
The German struggled during first practice, finishing outside the top ten, while the afternoon did not see much improvement as heavy rain prior to the start left the track very wet.
